In undergrad I worked fulltime and schooled fulltime. There were a few years where I didn’t have a day scheduled off. (I took some, of course, with unpaid vacation.) I pieced together different jobs and internships that would fit around my classes. I worked many holidays because we got time-and-half.

A large period of that time, Starbucks was my main job. I worked the opening shift because it allowed me to have most of the day to study and do internships or whatever else needed to be done. To open the store, we arrived at 5:30 am and unlocked the door at 6 am.

I eventually became a shift manager at Starbucks. That meant I oversaw the floor during my shift in addition to being a barista. It was my job to make sure everyone got breaks, money was handled correctly, and everything else that needed to happen happened.

I had one barista who was a kind guy and a good worker, I’ll call him Joe, but he used to cause me the greatest frustration. If he was scheduled to open the store with me, he almost always came late. Not a little late, but 30, 40, 60 minutes late. I couldn’t open the store until he got there, because our store policy was you need two people to open. This meant we opened late when he arrived late.

I usually asked him why he was late. The answer was usually something about the bus. Or something about the metro. And I thought I understood. Public transportation in Washington, DC is not reliable if you need to get somewhere on time. My solution was always to take a train earlier than the one scheduled to get me there on time. I wondered why Joe didn’t do that too. As it was, I got up way before 5am to get to work on time. That was after staying up until 11pm studying. I did it, he could too.

One day, I was talking to another shift manager about Joe’s tardiness. The other shift manager laughed. “Yeah, it annoys me too,” he said. “But the metro doesn’t open until 5am. There’s only one early bus he can catch. If he misses it there isn’t another one anytime soon thereafter and there isn’t an earlier one. And, if the bus runs late, he doesn’t catch the first train once the metro opens. He’ll be late if he doesn’t catch the first train. You know how the metro is.”

So, basically, Joe needed a perfect storm to get to work on time if he was scheduled to open with me. I thought about it. I didn’t know exactly where Joe lived, but if he had to take a bus to get to the metro and then take the metro he lived far away. The math didn’t add up. He was probably spending his first hour of wages on the bus and metro. The metro charged you by distance.

“So why doesn’t he move to a store closer to his house?” I asked.

The other shift manager shrugged. “There probably isn’t one.”

Starbucks was everywhere in DC at that time. In fact, I’d switched stores shortly before becoming a shift manager because I moved apartments. I switched stores because a 45-minute walk at 4-something in the morning was too much. I moved to a store that was a 15-minute walk from my house.

We’ve been talking about systems since George Floyd’s death.

The woman who ran my store was an immigrant and a brilliant businesswoman. She was supporting her kids back in her home country. She was trying to save up enough to maybe, someday, bring them here. Save up enough to give them the education and experience she wanted them to have. She was gunning for a promotion to regional manager or something like that. She was strict but she understood her employees. Joe was a good worker. She wasn’t’ going to fire him for being late. She knew that if she scheduled him for opening shift, he’d be late. She weighed her options when she made the schedule.

Every person had a story who worked in that Starbucks. And what I learned as I went, was that I had to be forgiving. I had to ask why before writing others off. I had to try to see things from their view, even though our lives were amazingly different.

The system was set up so I could live 15 minutes from where I worked.  I lived a 5-minute walk from the metro. I had multiple bus lines I could take. My life felt hard, but it was nice to know that there were lots of transportation options close to my home and I could find employment near where I lived.

When I left Starbucks, my boss asked if I wanted her to put me on temporary leave. If she did that, it would be easy to come back if I needed a job. I said “no.” I was leaving for a paid internship. The internship was a door to a job. I knew if I worked within the system, I’d get a job when I graduated that used my degree. It was a safe bet. As for Joe, he was trying to save up money to go to school. Unlike me, he didn’t have the option to take out student loans. He wanted to study, but he had to work first. The difference between us was subtle: I studied and worked around my classes while he worked and hoped to fit classes around his work.  

When the system is designed for you, you can trust that things will usually line up nicely. When the system isn’t designed for you, you find yourself working at a shift job where it costs you your first hour of wages to get there using unreliable public transportation. Think about that. Working a whole hour to just make back the money you spent on transport to get there. When the system isn’t designed for you, it’s not a safe bet or an easy decision to leave a job for education. School is important but it doesn’t pay the bills.

We all face setbacks and challenges. That’s life. But those challenges are apples to oranges when you factor in how the system is designed. Let’s move toward a time when my complaints can be compared apples to apples with Joe’s.